A completed room makeover from Season 2 of The Weekender | Photo courtesy East Coast Creative

Own a home in the Philly area? Need some serious design help? The folks at Bucks County-based East Coast Creative are looking for local participants for Season 3 of their Lowe’s-sponsored web series, The Weekender, a home-makeover show. Read more »

I do not have the best track record with plants. I’m a serial overwater-er, and as such I’ve had many a plant wither under my well-intentioned flood conditions. I’m the absolute worst with cacti because I just can’t seem to help myself when I’m wielding the watering can.

So when I found out that Field owner Erin Doherty has a cactus in her house that she hasn’t watered since October — October, people!— I nearly keeled over with shock. “It’s beautiful and thriving,” she says.

Well. I certainly have a thing or two to learn. Lucky for me, Erin’s the gal to turn to: Her pop-up shop specializes in succulents and cacti, and she has a house full of thriving plants to prove her green thumb is no joke. If you’re reading this so far, I’m going to assume need some help, too. Check out Erin’s top tips for mastering potted succulents and cacti below, then go check out the goods at her upcoming pop-ups, tonight at Lululemon in Fishtown from 6 to 8 pm, and on Mother’s Day weekend at Vestige. Read more »

Goodbye, greige! Move beyond muted rooms with a few well-placed pops of color that instantly transform mundane spaces into cheery masterpieces. Here, we take some serious inspo from a gorgeous room by interior designer and HGTV host Emily Henderson with a few key pieces that’ll give you the look at home. Read more »

My biggest home-buying regret is that I had “fireplace” on my nice-to-have list instead of my need-to-have list. This is my way of saying that my house doesn’t have a fireplace, and I regret it every winter.

So when I saw the ingenious two-story indoor fire pit inside this Haddonfield home, I knew I needed to find out the design details. Here, how it came to be, from the architect himself. Read more »

As a homeowner (or even a creative and savvy renter), there’s nothing more satisfying than successfully completing a DIY project in your home. Every time you look at, say, the tile backsplash you installed yourself, you find yourself beaming with pride. And I can tell you from experience that the feeling never really goes away.

If you’re looking to up your DIY ante, check out these upcoming local workshops that’ll hone your DIY prowess and spit you out on the other side with either a completed project, some serious know-how, or both. Read more »

If it’s on your 2017 to-do list to rethink, well, every square inch of your home’s decor, don’t panic. You don’t have to throw everything away and start from scratch. (Although, if you’re still holding on to your college futon, it’s probably time to upgrade.) In fact, you can change the entire look and feel of a room with very little money and almost no effort. Don’t believe me? Here are five easy things I’ve done in my own living room to refresh my style without a total overhaul. Read more »

Our furniture and decor scene is as varied as the homes lining our streets. There’s a bit of mid-century modern, some industrial, lots of antiques, and enough retro/reclaimed/gilt/wood/you-name-it goods to fill tiny trinities and vast manses alike. Here, some of the best (and our favorite) haunts for home furnishings from this year’s Best of Philly list. Read more »

It took most people a while to wrap their heads around the $60 candle (Diptyque, preferably the Baies scent). Sixty dollars? For a candle?! But then we smelled it — or, at least, we saw it in the dreamy Instagram accounts of every single fashion person ever, usually placed just-so next to a mountain of Chanel and, hell, if we can’t afford to own a Chanel mountain (or hill), maybe we can at least own that damn candle! — and we caved.

Now the bar (wick?) has been raised yet again, this time by a grouping of Fornasetti candles with scents of Mediterranean herbs, Lily of the Valley, sandalwood. But let’s be real: You don’t buy these candles for the wax or wicks — you buy them for the ceramic vessels, each an objet d’art in its own right. They feature the work of Italian surrealist artist Piero Fornasetti, whose artwork is now the basis of an entire design house (in fact, the luxury decorative objects have a cult following among in-the-know luxury collectors). So think of these less as mere candles and more as small works of art. The fact that they smell delicious, then, is just a bonus. Read more »

For those who thought Manayunk was a black hole of bars and tipsy twentysomethings, we have signs of (retail) hope. First, there’s Nicole Miller, which has been chugging along in its corner spot for 20 years. Then Philadelphia Runner announced it was opening a store in the former TAG Denim space (maybe in time for the Philly Marathon?) And now we’ve got Rowhouse, which officially opened this past Friday.

There’s a very specific sort of hate-reading that has nothing to do with checking out your sworn enemy’s Facebook statuses or scrolling through the site of a blogger you love to hate. (I have a friend who hate-reads FashionToast regularly, but insists that she has absolutely no deep-seated affection for author Rumi Neely.)

This hate-reading is targeted to design, specifically the old-hat styling conventions that have become something like the copious-knuckle-rings of the fashion blogosphere. This is my favorite kind of hate-reading, and the sort I do most often, with Martha Stewart Living, Better Homes & Gardens and the Restoration Hardware catalogs. I scoff at RH’s stupid playroom setups. Who seriously would dare have an all-white nursery strung with Christmas lights?(Me! Me! I would! It’s so gorgeous, like a fairy land of dreams!)